Thought leader

Office anthropology™ Go Premium I See a Quadrant (von Sachsen-Rampton, 1929) The JC puts on his pith-helmet, grabs his butterfly net and a rucksack full of marmalade sandwiches, and heads into the concrete jungleIndex: Click ᐅ to expand: Work anthropology Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Requests? Insults? We’d love to 📧 hear from you. Sign up for our newsletter.

Thought leader
/θɔːt ˈliːdə/ (n.)

One who spends his time on prediction — articulating theories, plans, strategies, technologies —to anticipate where things are going, and almost none explaining after the fact — the absence of fact — why they were wrong. LinkedIn is unusually susceptible to thought-leadership because it is not the done thing to call bullshit in a professional setting.

While the legal industry has changed out of all recognition in the last 40 years — anyone still use a Dictaphone, or communicate by fax? — but in none of the ways legal thought-leaders predicted. It just changed by increments, through tiny, unconcerted, self-interested decisions. It iterated. It evolved.

The JC’s prediction: the legal industry will continue to evolve, defying all expectations and confounding all predictions of the latter-day seers, visionaries, professors and change instigators. This is, of course, hardly a bold prediction. Rather, it’s a statement of the bleeding obvious. Of all the myriad of possible vectors a complex system could move in over an extended period — multiple vectors — the odds of it following any single one that you described in advance are infinitesimal.

You have as much chance — less, come to think of it — of correctly predicting the flight path of a deflating balloon.

One thing is certain: the fundamental condition for every industry-shaping iteration is that it enhances “fitness”: not society’s fitness, nor the industry’s, nor the market’s, nor the firm’s, nor the client’s — it enhances the fitness of the person making the decision.

See also

• Consultation
• Evolution by natural selection
• survivor
• LinkedIn